I really wanted Kinsa to work!

I heard about a smart thermometer called Kinsa. We had recently shopped for a thermometer when someone was sick. I’ve seen thermometers with a digital display but never heard of a smart thermometer.

Unlike most digital products, this one is actually for sale, so I ordered one from Amazon.com. I opened the package and the first thing I had to was add spacers to the thermometer’s audio plug (it uses audio to communicate the temperature to the app) and its adapter (which lets you use the thermometer without having your phone next to your kid’s mouth). I imagine that they designed the thing based on the iPhone 5/5s and then Apple added some tiny length to the audio plug; life sucks in the world of making stuff for Apple’s devices, but it certainly isn’t optimal to ask your customers to modify the product to make it useable!

Okay, I added the spacers. You’re supposed to plug the device into the audio port so the thermometer and the phone can calibrate the audio and get to know each other. Then the app is supposed to show you what to do. But my app never started. First I got the screen on the left; then I got the screen on the right, after I restarted the app.

In other words, the app didn’t work. Never did start up. Combined with the thing about adding spacers, an intelligent user might guess that the company didn’t have money to re-engineer the audio cable and wasn’t really prepared to update the app for IOS 8. Bad timing. Bad luck. I hope the company survives and learns how to do product management properly!